I Got the Recipe for Applebee’s $1 Long Island Iced Teas

Across the country, customers are settling in to various Applebee’s to take advantage of the $1 Long Island Iced Teas that are being served for the month of December.

“What a great deal,” people think. “I bet those are some fine quality, hand-crafted cocktails made with nothing but the finest ingredients!” Just kidding. No one is thinking that. In fact, the only people who are even thinking about Long Island Iced Teas are college students who want to get trashed as quickly as possible.

Last month, when Applebee’s was showcasing its $1 margarita, I was lucky enough to be handed a video that showed how much water was in it the cocktail. This month, I do not have a video of the Long Island Iced Teas being made, but I do have the recipe:

That makes a 295 ounce big ass batch of nasty, especially when we see that the sour mix is made with four quarts of water and one bag of GFGB Sweet and Sour Mix. I do not know what “GFGB” stands for, but my guess is that it stands for Gnarly Fucking Gross Bullshit. Once all of the ingredients are slopped together, that means that the $1 Long Island Iced Tea is about 54% water. When you factor in that each drink served has approximately an additional ounce of Pepsi in it, it becomes even more water. Hmmm, 54% water? Actually, that’s not so bad when you realize each cocktail is 46% liquor. A traditional LIT is as follows:

The above recipe creates a Long Island that is 50% liquor, so Applebee’s isn’t too far off. However, when we look closer at the totally secret photo of the recipe that was sent to me by an Applebee’s mole, we learn that the old recipe was made with 4 quarts of sour mix instead of five meaning the alcohol content was much higher before they started selling them for a dollar. I particularly like the notes in the recipe explaining “there is a significant difference in the taste of the L.I.T.” and “it is slightly lighter in color” now. Yeah, because they’re more watered down now. Never fear though, because whoever it was that sent out that memo made sure to say that it “tastes much better.” Uh huh. Right. Sure it does.

Customers don’t seem to mind the newly watered down version as I have heard from bartender after bartender who tell me that they are making Long Island Iced Teas hand over fist and they are constantly running out of glassware. There is a huge demand and Applebee’s is happy to supply. Just yesterday, I shared a video of a customer who had a few too many and was cut off which he did not appreciate. He proceeded to cuss everyone out and punch an employee before running out of the restaurant. Truly, it was a great video, but someone made me take it down claiming to be the “creative owner” and he wanted 50% of all the profits I made for sharing it on my Facebook page. Well, the jokes on him, because I don’t make money from videos posted on Facebook. Regardless, I took it down and I suppose he is now shopping it around at Worldstar and TMZ. Good luck, dude.

One other thing that Applebee’s servers have filled me in on is that the price of other drinks have increased to make up for the cheap ass LIT’s. One such report is that the Dos Equis Brewtus is $5.99 now instead of $5.29 and the Perfect Patron Margarita went up a whole dollar. Whatever. If you want to take full advantage of the cheap liquor, order yourself a dozen Long Island Iced Teas and then tip your server and bartender generously. You have until the end of December to live it up. By the way, a little bird told me that for the month of January, they will be featuring $1 beers. Have fun, Applebee’s employees!

Totally unrelated: if you would like a personalized video message from me to send to your co-workers or to place on your Facebook page, click here. I will pretty much say anything for you. I have no shame, but you already knew that.

As an insider, this recipie sounds bogus! This is not the recipie handed down from corporate or the correct sweet and sour mix. While the brand mentioned is the normal mix and yields 4 qts, to add an extra qt would be against spec and they are cheating thier customers. For ease of exacution, we are using a mix that is much simpler to make to take pressure off the bartenders. There is much hype that Applebee’s doesn’t care about thier employees and that are suffering because of these promotions. If you are stressing band suffering it’s your franchise owner not Applebee’s. In the end this sounds like it has come down from a cheap franchise owner. Shame on them. While this is a cheap drink when made correctly, it’s far from weak.

While it’s likely to be adjusted to help defray costs, it is also possible that due to some states liquor laws allow a maximum amount of liqour per drink. So even if this is not the case in your state, to ensure consistency among stores it may get adjusted. BTW, I don’t now or ever have worked at Applebees. Thanks for a great blog, I enjoy it!

I don’t care what it costs, I want a drink I’m going to like and I rreeeaaallly like their LTI’s. I had one on Wednesday with dinner waiting for my car’s oil change to be done. Steve was a superb waiter – attentive without being intrusive, personable without the pretentiousness, polite without it coming off as ‘just doing my job’. Been a really long time since I’ve had a good waiter. (Applebees, Rt 1 Lawrenceville). He was much appreciated. And now that I know how to fix my drink, excuse me while I go add some water to it.